Big Shiny Tunes - History

History

The album Big Shiny Tunes was released in 1996. A new edition has since been released every year, with Big Shiny Tunes 2 being particularly successful (the second and third albums alone account for 2,000,000 of the CDs and tapes sold under the brand). Big Shiny Tunes 2 had been accompanied by heavy advertising. The next year, MuchMusic assembled Big Shiny Tunes 3 by having its audience vote on which songs they would like to have included, a novel process. The success of the series continued as Big Shiny Tunes 6 sold 68,500 copies in its first week in 2001, more than any other album in Canada that week.

However, the series soon lost its predominance with the growth in popularity of rap music, as the next year Big Shiny Tunes 7 was outsold in its first week in Canada by Eminem's soundtrack to the film 8 Mile. Still, Big Shiny Tunes 7 sold 25,100 copies that week. Big Shiny Tunes 8, released in 2003, also made the best-seller list in Canada. The last album in the series, Big Shiny Tunes 14, was released on October 20, 2009 without any edition released since then (As of September 2012) possibly indicating the discontinuation of the series.